Rachel Tamar Van

move slowly and build things

The blatant use of false, inaccurate histories to arrive at a decision the majority of the Court clearly wanted regardless of the facts is a feature of both Dred Scott and Dobbs. It’s an apt comparison. 🗃️

Check out these fabulous DH talks 12/4—register to get details on how to join virtually—times are all PST.

This is too much.

Looks fantastic!

CFP: USIH-IU Community Scholars Program | Society for US Intellectual History In partnership with the Institute for American Thought at Indiana University, the Society for U.S. Intellectual History is pleased to announce the continuation of a new opportunity to support continge...

🔔 We’re honored to open a new round in the @susih.bsky.social -IU Community Scholars Program, which unlocks onsite + remote library access for 3 years for contingent scholars + historians working beyond the academy. Please apply + share! CFP due 2/1. Onward! 🗃️ s-usih.org/2025/12/cfp-...

This means NSF dissertation improvement grants in the social sciences are simply...not happening.

How Oregon’s Data Center Boom Is Supercharging a Water Crisis

Amazon has come to the state’s eastern farmland, worsening a water pollution problem that’s been linked to cancer and miscarriages.

Rolling Stone reports in collaboration with @thefern.org: www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...

Hope it’s solid — Pauli Murray was so badass. She should be a household name. Legend.

Stolen Relations: Recovering Stories of Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas Stolen Relations seeks to recover stories of Indigenous slavery in the Americas. The website has a database as well as a map, timeline, interviews, and curricular materials.

Lin Fisher, et. al. assembled this amazing new DH resource:

Tell Students the Truth About American History We owe it to Americans of all ages to be honest about the country’s past, including its contradictions.

I spent October traveling to schools throughout the South talking to students about American history. What I found were young people who understand we can tell a story that includes both the positive and the negative. As one 8th grader in Memphis said, “Doesn’t seem that hard, just say both things.”

WETA to cut staff, cancel ‘PBS News Weekend’ and close News Hour West bureau The restructuring includes the elimination of 34 positions, following another round of cuts made in September.

PBS NEWS WEEKEND has been cancelled and 34 jobs will be cut at WETA in Washington D.C.

The NEWS HOUR West Coast bureau will also close and the updated daily West Coast broadcast will end.

“We cannot fully compensate for the scope of the federal funding loss.”

current.org/2025/11/weta... #PBS

Fantastic!

a cartoon girl in a blue dress is kneeling in a field holding a bag ALT: a cartoon girl in a blue dress is kneeling in a field holding a bag

A reminder - last March, republicans promised to restore $1.1B in funding to DC in exchange for funding the government, and Mike Johnson never took it up in the House.

Dutch province wants to honour African-American WWII soldiers after the US removed a plaque at the militairy cemetery in Margraten highlighting their contributions.
CC: @chadbourn.bsky.social

11Alive news headline: "Woman sits in car for 14 hours to get food during New Birth Baptist church food giveaway More than 2,000 people waited in their cars in line Saturday morning in order to receive food."

Here in Atlanta yesterday, more than 2,000 people waited in their cars—one woman for 14 hours—for a box of food. The giveaway ended early; there wasn't enough to go around.

Multiply this scene by countless others across the country, and you get a sense of how crushing the desperation is right now.

YouTube video by PBS NewsHour Top researchers consider leaving U.S. amid funding cuts: 'The science world is ending'

The United States was the leading destination for top scientists from all over the world.

That is ending. Politicians ended it. It will cripple our future competitiveness.

And it’s such a bitter tragedy. Almost no Americans, Conservative or Liberal, grasp what is now being stolen from them.

Reminder you can donate $25 to help feed Angelenos and be entered into a raffle for two World Series tickets to game 4 with Shohei Ohtani on the mound! Let’s raise some money for people in need while gov’t funds/SNAP are being slashed: givebutter.com/game4?gbtid=...

Promotional poster for National Friends of Libraries Week, October 19-25, 2025. Features a stylized heart with a book at its center against a striped pink background.

Everybody needs a little help from their Friends. 💞

This #NationalFriendsofLibrariesWeek, help us at PLA & @ala-united.bsky.social thank the Friends for their support & advocacy! 🙌

Tell them how much you appreciate the work they do #ForOurLibraries! More on getting involved👉 https://bit.ly/3BWAy5a

Interesting! Any articles on this?

Rubio promised to betray U.S. informants to get Trump’s El Salvador prison deal To secure U.S. access to President Nayib Bukele’s notorious CECOT prison, Rubio agreed to turn over several MS-13 leaders central to a long-running Justice Department investigation.

This story is extraordinary even by 2025 standards. Marco Rubio, the nation's top diplomat, made a deal with Bukele and agreed to renege on informant agreements in a years-long DOJ investigation into MS-13, totally undercutting credibility of such agreements.

www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

YouTube video by MLB Dog first pitch! Shohei Ohtani’s dog Decoy RUNS out the FIRST PITCH!

SHOHEI'S DOG DECOY 'THROWS' OUT THE FIRST PITCH. WE LOVE YOU SHOHEI WE LOVE YOU DECOY.

I'm so glad Shohei came to LA. He's a baseball folk hero with an adorable doggy and he hits dingers and steals bases and he really loves baseball and his puppy

The Friends of BLS steering committee is sponsoring a member webinar noon to 1pm ET Thurs, Oct 23.

We aim to build nonpartisan support for a strong BLS & need your perspectives & energy.

Former Commissioners @ericagroshen.bsky.social, William Beach, & @erikamcentarfer.bsky.social will...
#EconSky

Your reminder—or maybe no one ever told you—that complications from a measles infection include immune amnesia (where you lose immunity to everything), vision and hearing loss, brain damage, and a fatal brain disease called Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis that can show up years later.

Image: A variation on Benjamin Franklin’s “Join, or Die” engraving, originally published in the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1754. Each segment of the snake has the name of a university sent Trump’s “compact”: Texas, AZ, Vanderbilt, USC, Dartmouth, UVA, Brown, Penn, MIT.

Shared courtesy of my Penn History colleague, Ben Nathans

George was just trying to get to work.

ICE pepper-sprayed him, dragged him from his car, locked him in a detention center, and placed him on suicide watch. He even missed his young daughter’s birthday in the process.

This man is a veteran and American citizen. Don't look away.

How Native Nations Shaped the Revolution The Founders were inspired—and threatened—by the independence and self-governance of nations like the Iroquois Confederacy.

New essay in the Atlantic today: How Native Nations Shaped the Revolution by Ned Blackhawk (with many lessons on how we ended up where we are as a nation, and a gift link) www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

The Only Footage of Mark Twain: The Original & Digitally Restored Films Shot by Thomas Edison We know what Mark Twain looked like, and we think we know what he sounded like. Just above see what he looked like in motion, strolling around Stormfield, his house in Redding, Connecticut---signature...

The Only Footage of Mark Twain: The Original & Digitally Restored Films Shot by Thomas Edison

Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanmar U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly said “no one has died" because of his government’s decision to gut its foreign aid program.

i desperately want everyone involved in the destruction of USAID to have to, st the very least, answer to the american people for the suffering and misery they have caused apnews.com/article/myan...

This is all but literally one of the things that King James II did that led to the Glorious Revolution in 1688 and the English Bill of Rights in 1689. (Want to guess who used that document as a model in the 1770s and 1780s?)

avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century...